Artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone a rapid expansion in recent years.
Tech leaders have hailed an “AI revolution” – predicting “transformative” effects for humanity – while some governments have set their sights on AI-driven economic growth.
Yet, the industry is also facing scrutiny on many fronts, from inaccuracies in AI outputs through to the threat it poses to democracy.
One major critique concerns the environmental impact of AI, particularly the intensive energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the data centres that power it.
Campaigners, journalists and researchers have warned that the rapid expansion of data centres could slow down or even reverse the global shift towards net-zero.
The topic is complex, not least because the future of AI – and the role it could play in increasing or potentially helping to reduce emissions – remains highly uncertain.
Below, Carbon Brief takes a look at some of the best available figures, largely from the International Energy Agency (IEA), to explore the energy and emissions impact of AI.
- Data centres currently account for a small share of global emissions and electricity use
- Around a tenth of the electricity demand growth by 2030 is set to be driven by data centres
- Data centres could account for half of electricity demand growth in some countries
- Fossil-fuel use will likely expand to power data centres, but clean-energy supplies are set to grow faster
- There is a lot of uncertainty about how much data centres will expand
1. Data centres currently account for a small share of global emissions and electricity use
The process of training and deploying AI models relies on data centres – large, energy-intensive facilities that house computing infrastructure.
Data centres already underpin the internet, among other things, making them essential for modern life. But as hype around AI has grown in recent years, investment in new data centres has ballooned.
The global electricity consumption of expanding data centres has grown by around 12% each year since 2017, according to the IEA’s recent “energy and AI” report.
Concerns about “skyrocketing” electricity demand have also prompted warnings of data centres driving up CO2 emissions, as fossil fuels still generate much of the world’s power.
Indeed, companies, such as Google, Meta and Microsoft, have reported large emissions spikes over the past few years due to data-centre expansion, despite their net-zero pledges.
One research paper concludes that the electricity demand of AI “runs counter to the massive efficiency gains that are needed to achieve net-zero”. Others have voiced concerns that data centres will “overwhelm” and “undermine” both national and company-level climate targets.
Reporting often mentions the electricity demand of data centres – or their emissions – “doubling”, “tripling” or increasing by some other large percentage in the coming years.
But these increases, while potentially dramatic in relative terms, are starting from a low baseline. As shown in the chart below, data centres are currently responsible for just over 1% of global electricity demand and 0.5% of CO2 emissions, according to IEA data.
Given this starting point, even as data centres expand, the IEA suggests that they will make a relatively small contribution to climate change, in the short term.
The agency estimates that data-centre emissions will reach 1% of CO2 emissions by 2030 in its central scenario, or 1.4% in a faster-growth scenario.
Nevertheless, it notes that this is one of the few sectors where emissions are set to grow – alongside road transport and aviation – as most will likely decarbonise in the coming years.
2. Around a tenth of the electricity demand growth by 2030 is set to be driven by data centres
The world is entering what the IEA describes as a “new age of electricity”, in which the electrification of transport, buildings and industry drives a surge in demand for power.
Along with electric cars and factories, data centres are frequently highlighted by analysts as a key “emerging driver” of this demand.
Under the IEA’s central scenario for data-centre growth, the sector’s global electricity consumption would more than double between 2024 and 2030, reaching 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by the end of the decade. This is equivalent to the current electricity demand of Japan.
The IEA describes AI as “the most important driver of this growth”.
As it stands, AI has been responsible for around 5-15% of data-centre power use in recent years, but this could increase to 35-50% by 2030, according to another report prepared for the IEA.
However, the 530TWh rise in electricity demand in data centres by 2030 would only be 8% of the overall increase in demand that the IEA projects, as shown in the chart below.
This is less than electric vehicles (838TWh) or air conditioning (651TWh). It is considerably less than the 1,936TWh growth expected in industrial sectors by 2030.
If data-centre electricity use rose in line with the IEA’s faster-growth scenario, the facilities would be responsible for around 12% of global demand growth overall.
While the IEA says “uncertainties widen” when considering electricity demand growth beyond 2030, it expects a continued – albeit slower – increase to 1,193TWh by 2035.
This would mean annual demand growth roughly halving, from around 90TWh per year out to 2030, down to less than 50TWh a year out to 2035.
3. Data centres could account for half of electricity demand growth in some countries
While the global picture suggests a relatively modest role for data centres in driving near-future electricity demand growth, it could be far more pronounced in some countries.
Data centres are very geographically concentrated, both in terms of their global distribution and within leading countries. Today, nearly half of their electricity consumption takes place in the US, 25% in China and 15% in Europe, according to the IEA.
US data centres used around 4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023 and this is set to rise to 7-12% by 2028, according to analysis by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
In Ireland – regarded as a European “tech hub” – around 21% of the nation’s electricity is used for data centres. The IEA estimates that this share could rise to 32% by 2026.
Data-centre electricity demand tends to be further localised in certain regions. In the US state of Virginia, these facilities already consume 26% of electricity, while in the Irish capital, Dublin, the figure is 79%, according to analysis by Oeko-Institute.
Much of the commentary on AI threatening climate goals comes from “advanced economies” in the global north, where the IEA estimates that, on average, a quarter of electricity demand growth by 2030 will be driven by data centres.
(In many of these countries, electricity demand has previously been flat or falling for years.)
Roughly half of the power demand growth in the US and Japan over the next five years is expected to come from data centres, according to the IEA, as shown in the figure below.
While there are some notable exceptions, such as Malaysia, data centres are set to be a relatively small portion of electricity demand growth in developing and emerging markets.
Around the world, electricity grids are under strain, with many developed countries, in particular, seeing long wait times for grid connections and new transmission lines. Data-centre growth is raising this pressure.
There are also growing concerns, notably in the US, about the impact data-centre growth could have on energy bills.
The IEA says that demand growth presents “advanced economies” with a “wake-up call” for the electricity sector to invest in infrastructure, otherwise “there is a risk that meeting data-centre load growth could entail trade-offs with other goals, such as electrification”.
4. Fossil-fuel use will likely expand to power data centres, but clean-energy supplies are set to grow faster
The extent to which data-centre growth increases emissions depends on which energy sources power those data centres.
Data centres can use power from the grid, in which case their electricity mix will reflect that of the region they are in and could therefore become cleaner as nations decarbonise.
They can also be powered by “captive” sources, built to supply specific facilities, such as solar panels, small nuclear reactors or gas turbines.
There are concerns that data-centre expansion will be used to justify the prolonged use of fossil fuels, “locking in” a future of elevated emissions.
Indeed, the likes of Shell have framed AI in such terms and some data-centre operators have been explicitly seeking gas connections to meet their electricity needs.
Currently, coal is the biggest single electricity source for data centres globally, largely due to the numerous facilities in China.
Overall, fossil fuels provide nearly 60% of power to data centres, according to the IEA. Renewables meet 27% of their electricity demand and nuclear another 15%.
(These figures are based on the electricity these facilities consume, rather than any contracts they have to buy clean energy credits.)
In the IEA’s central scenario, by 2035 the ratio of the data-centre electricity mix switches from around 60% fossil fuels and 40% clean power to 60% clean power and 40% fossil fuels, as shown in the chart below.
This is expected to be driven primarily by the wider global expansion of renewables, although some projects will be funded directly by data-centre companies.
However, the IEA says significantly more gas and coal power would likely still be required to meet data-centre demand, both from ramping up existing plants and building new ones.
Gas-power generation for data centres is expected to more than double from 120TWh in 2024 to 293TWh in 2035, with much of this growth in the US, according to the IEA.
About 38GW of captive gas plants currently “in development” – roughly a quarter of all such projects – are planned to power data centres, according to Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
The US has doubled the amount of gas- and oil-fired capacity it has in development over the past year, driven partly by the energy demand of the “burgeoning AI industry”, according to GEM.
However, these projects are facing long lead times and “sharply” rising costs, with GEM noting, as a result, that many may never materialise.
5. There is a lot of uncertainty about how much data centres will expand
Currently, there are no comprehensive global datasets available on data-centre electricity consumption or emissions, with few governments mandating any reporting of such numbers.
All figures concerning the energy and climate impact of AI are therefore estimates.
The IEA has assessed hundreds of available estimates and forecasts, noting that even historical data can be “widely divergent”, due in part to a lack of common definitions.
On top of this, there are major uncertainties, including over how quickly AI will be adopted. Despite the enthusiastic uptake of generative AI by individuals and companies, some argue that the business case for continued, rapid growth may be weaker than suggested.
Another uncertainty is how energy-efficient AI will be. Experts have already identified efficiency improvements resulting from better chips, more efficient training algorithms and larger data centres, all of which could continue curbing electricity demand.
(Google has also reported a substantial drop in the electricity use required for individual AI search queries, which is already small compared to the power needed to train AI models.)
A final uncertainty is over how many proposed data centres will actually get built, with some speculative requests for grid capacity relating to plans that may never materialise.
As a result of these knowledge gaps, there have been numerous estimates of short-term electricity demand growth from data centres, which have produced very different results, as shown in the chart below.
Some estimates – such as one from the Gas Exporting Countries Forum arguing that more gas exports will be needed to fuel meteoric rises in electricity demand for AI – have been deemed less credible in reviews by independent experts.
Another area of great uncertainty concerns the impact that the application of AI could have on electricity use and emissions.
Some researchers have attempted to calculate how much AI could curb emissions, by helping to identify efficiency gains in other parts of the energy system, or by making technological breakthroughs.
In some “exploratory” analysis, the IEA says such gains could cancel out any extra data-centre emissions due to the growth of AI.
However, it adds that despite the AI hype, “there is currently no existing momentum of AI adoption that would unlock these emissions reductions”.
The post AI: Five charts that put data-centre energy use – and emissions – into context appeared first on Carbon Brief.
AI: Five charts that put data-centre energy use – and emissions – into context
Discussing climate change can make a difference. Focusing on the impacts in everyday life is a good place to start, experts say.
When Bad Bunny climbed onto broken power lines during his Super Bowl halftime show, millions of viewers saw a spectacle. Climate communicators saw a lesson in how to talk about climate change.
Wondering How to Talk About Climate Change? Take a Lesson from Bad Bunny
Sydney, Thursday 19 March 2026 — In response to escalating attacks on gas fields in the Middle East, including Israeli strikes on Iran’s giant South Pars gas field and Iranian retaliations on gas fields in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the following lines can be attributed to Solaye Snider, Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“The targeting of gas fields across the Middle East is a perilous escalation that reinforces just how vulnerable our fossil-fuelled world really is.
“Oil and gas have long been used as tools of power and coercion by authoritarian regimes. They cause climate chaos and environmental pollution and they drive conflict and war. The energy security of every nation still hooked on gas, including Australia, is under direct threat.
“For countries that are reliant on gas imports, like Sri Lanka, Pakistan and South Korea, this crisis is just getting started. It can take months to restart a gas export facility once it is shut down, meaning the shockwaves of these strikes will be felt for a long time to come.
“It is a gross and tragic injustice that while civilians are killed and lose their homes to this escalating violence, and families struggle with a tightening cost-of-living, gas giants like Woodside and Santos have seen their share prices surge on the prospect of windfall war profits.
“We must break this cycle. Transitioning to local renewable energy is the way to protect Australian households from the inherent volatility of fossil fuels like gas.”
-ENDS-
Images available for download via the Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact: Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lkeller@greenpeace.org
Greenpeace response to escalating attacks on gas fields in Middle East
Climate Change
DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Iran war fallout continues
WORK FROM HOME: The International Energy Agency has advised its member countries to take 10 steps in response to the ongoing energy crisis fuelled by the Iran war, including reducing highway speeds and encouraging people to work from home, said the Guardian. It came after retaliatory attacks between Israel and Iran continued to destroy energy infrastructure in the Middle East, causing energy prices to soar further, said Reuters.
SUPPLY DISRUPTED: The IEA also said it is prepared to make more of its member nations’ 1.4bn-barrel oil reserves available to help ease the impacts of what it called the “biggest supply disruption in the history of the oil market”, reported Bloomberg. The outlet noted that Asian countries have been hit hardest by the shortages, caused by a “near-halt” of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
EU SUMMIT: The energy crisis dominated talks at an EU leaders summit on Thursday, said Politico. Arriving at the summit, Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez attacked other European leaders for using the energy crisis as an excuse to “gut climate policies”, according to the EU Observer. The Financial Times said that some European leaders have asked the European Commission to overhaul its flagship emissions trading system (ETS) by summer in response to the energy crisis.
COAL BOOST: In response to the conflict, utility companies in Asia are “boosting coal-fired power generation to cut costs and safeguard energy supply”, said Reuters. UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell told Reuters: “If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, breaking dependencies which have shackled economies, this is the time.”
Around the world
- WINDFARM WINDFALL: The Trump administration in the US is considering a nearly $1bn settlement with TotalEnergies to cancel the French energy company’s two planned windfarms off the US east coast and have it instead invest in fossil-gas infrastructure in Texas, according to documents seen by the New York Times.
- BUSINESS CLASH: Following “clashes” with the agribusiness sector, Brazil launched its new climate plan, which calls for a 49-58% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2022 levels by 2025 and includes “specific guidelines for different sectors”, reported Folha de Sao Paolo.
- SALES SLUMP: Sales of liquified petroleum gas from India’s state-run oil companies have fallen by 17% this month due to cuts in deliveries to commercial and industrial consumers “amid the widespread logistical bottlenecks triggered by the Iran war”, said the Economic Times.
- CUBAN ENERGY CRISIS: The US imposed an “effective oil blockade” on Cuba, leaving the country facing its “worst energy crisis in decades”, reported the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Chinese exports of solar panels to the island have “skyrocketed” since 2023, it added.
- RECORD HIGHS: An “unprecedented” heatwave in the western and south-western US is “shattering dozens of temperature records” and could lead to drought in California in the coming months, reported the Los Angeles Times.
- VULNERABILITY CONCERNS: Landslides that killed more than 100 people in southern Ethiopia have “renewed concerns about Ethiopia’s vulnerability to climate-related disasters”, said the Addis Standard.
1%
The percentage of England’s land surface that could be devoted to renewables by 2050, according to the long-awaited “land-use framework” released by the UK government this week and covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Approaching international climate action by shifting the burden of mitigation onto higher-income countries could avoid 13.5 million premature deaths from air pollution in middle- and lower-income countries by 2050 | The Lancet Global Health
- Beavers can turn the ecosystems surrounding streams into “persistent” sinks of carbon that can sequester an order of magnitude more than non-beaver-modified ecosystems can store | Communications Earth & Environment
- Mobile-phone data from seven diverse countries during the summer heatwaves of 2022-23 showed a “widespread tendency to withdraw into homes” and an increase in out-of-home activities that can offer cooling, such as indoor retail | Environmental Research: Climate
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief this week published a significant update to its map of how climate change is affecting extreme weather events around the world. The map now includes 232 new extreme weather events from studies published in 2024 and 2025. Of these events, 196 were made more severe or more likely to occur by human-driven climate change, 12 were made less severe or less likely to occur and 10 had no discernible human influence. (The remaining 14 studies were inconclusive.)
Spotlight
New Zealand breaks new ground on climate litigation
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to experts about a first-of-its-kind climate lawsuit in New Zealand.
Earlier this week, representatives from two environmentally focused legal advocacy groups challenged the New Zealand government’s climate-action plan in court.
The plaintiffs argued that the measures laid out in the plan are insufficient to achieve the country’s legal obligation to hold global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.
The case could be “influential” in shaping lawsuits and rulings around the world, one legal expert not involved in the case told Carbon Brief.
Reductions vs removals
The new case contends that there are several issues regarding the New Zealand government’s response to climate change.
One of the key arguments the plaintiffs make is that New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan, which covers the period from 2026-30, is overreliant on the use of tree-planting to achieve its targets.
When the plan was released in December 2024, it was “immediately clear that it was a pretty lacklustre plan”, Eliza Prestidge Oldfield, senior legal researcher at the Environmental Law Initiative, one of the groups behind the legal case, told Carbon Brief.
The plan called for large-scale planting of pine tree plantations, which are not native to New Zealand and have a high risk of burning. Because of this, there are concerns about how permanent any carbon removal provided by these plantations actually can be, experts told Carbon Brief.
Catherine Higham, senior policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who was not involved in the case, said:
“The lawyers are arguing that there are real challenges with equating the emissions that you may be able to remove from the atmosphere through afforestation with actual emissions reductions, which are much more certain.”
‘Global dialogue’
While other climate lawsuits elsewhere in the world have also focused on the inadequacy of a government’s plan to meet its stated emissions-reduction targets, this is the first such case that addresses the role of removals head-on.
Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, told Carbon Brief that the lawsuit “builds on a decade of climate litigation” in national, regional and international courts.
Maxwell, who was not involved in the New Zealand case, added that there is a “real global dialogue” between, not just plaintiffs, but national courts as well. She said:
“[National courts] look to common issues that have been decided in other countries. They’re not binding on that court if it’s at the national level, but they are influential.”
Given that many other countries have legal frameworks requiring their governments to create plans outlining the pathway to their long-term climate targets, Prestidge Oldfield told Carbon Brief that other jurisdictions “should be interested in these questions around the level of certainty”.
Higham noted that, even if the case is successful, addressing the plan’s shortfalls will face its own set of challenges. She told Carbon Brief:
“A lot of these decisions are political and they can be politically contentious…Those [measures] have to be put into action through legislation and that is then subject to the usual political process. So that’s where the challenge comes in.”
While she could not speculate on the outcome of the case, Prestidge Oldfield said it was “very heartening” to see that both the judge and the opposing counsel “appreciated how much of a concern climate change is globally”.
She added:
“It’s not a given that the judge would even be interested in climate change.”
Watch, read, listen
COMMON APPROACH: The Heated podcast analysed fossil-fuel advertisements and highlighted the most common deception tactics they employed.
THREAT ASSESSMENT: Mongabay mapped the potential threat that oil extraction poses to Venezuela’s ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest and its coral reefs.
SALT LAKES? GREAT!: High Country News interviewed journalist Dr Caroline Tracey about her new book on saline lakes – such as Utah’s Great Salt Lake – the threats that face them and what they can teach us.
Coming up
- 23 March-2 April: Third meeting of the preparatory commission for the High Seas Treaty, New York
- 24-27 March: 64th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bangkok
- 26-29 March: 14th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Pick of the jobs
- International Centre of Research for the Environment and Development (CIRAD), IPCC chapter scientist | Salary: €3,200-3,750 per month. Location: Nogent-sur-Marne, France
- Avaaz, chief of staff | Salary: Dependent on location. Location: Remote, with preferred time zones
- Green Party, social media officer | Salary: £31,592-£32,192. Location: Remote or Westminster, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 20 March 2026: Energy crisis deepens | Brazil’s new climate plan | New Zealand climate case appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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